


One Drop

by orphan_account



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Injury Recovery, Pre-Relationship, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:53:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9167143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Still in denial.
> 
> (It's not just a river in Egypt)

They weren’t supposed to survive Scarif.

It wasn’t that Jyn wanted to die – she was a survivor, always had been. She fought even when hope was a single flickering firefly trying to bring light to an entire city. Surrender wasn’t in her nature. The idea of her surrendering to death was completely absurd.

And yet, when they had boarded the ship to Scarif, she had quite calmly acknowledged that she wasn’t coming back. It was less surrendering to the inevitable and more a simple understanding of what would be. This was a suicide mission. She would fight until the very end to get those plans to the rebellion, to ensure the Death Star was destroyed before it could take any more innocent lives. To uphold her father’s legacy. To make him proud.

But Jyn knew that she wasn’t coming back from this. It was the end of her story, and probably the end of everyone else’s on the ship too.

Then they survived.

/

The stares of the other rebels on Yavin IV were stifling. Jyn wasn’t a hero – she was a broken shell, held together by pure stubborn hope that barely covered the cracks and jagged edges. She didn’t know what to do with warm smiled and congratulations. The others were all far more heroic – but whilst Jyn had escaped with relatively minor injuries, the rest had all been immersed in bacta and left for the Force to decide if they would survive.

Jyn wanted to scream at the unfairness, but that had never helped her before. Instead, she pasted on a brittle smile and spent as much time as she could haunting the medical wing.

Sometimes she was joined by others. Baze, Chirrut, and Bodhi didn’t have friends in the rebellion, and even Cassian seemed to have avoided associating with anyone other than K2. But a couple of the others had survived, and their friends flocked to the wing with red eyes and a complete lack of understanding of what had happened. They assumed that Jyn was happy, or proud. But really, what did she have to be happy about now?

She had done her job. She had survived. But she had to force herself to feel nothing just to get out of her bunk in the morning.

On this particular day, Jyn found herself being joined by Mon Mothma.

“I hear Baze is almost ready to come out of the bacta tank.”

Jyn gave a small nod of acknowledgement.

“The medical droids are optimistic of a full recovery.”

Jyn nodded again. Physically, she didn’t doubt that he would be fine. Baze was so physical – it was impossible to think of him any other way. But mentally…

She doubted she was the only one who had never expected to survive.

“There’s a group of pilots going out today to find more bacta. We don’t have the stocks here that we used to. I know you’re still recovering, but I know something about feeling helpless. I’m sure they’d appreciate an extra set of hands.”

Jyn glanced over at Mon Mothma, surprised.

She didn’t like the woman much. She was the consummate politician and authority figure, and Jyn had never done well with those. But she was also part of the rebellion. Sometimes Jyn forgot that the other people here had a past.

“I don’t know that I’d be of any help.” She finally replied.

Jyn didn’t want to leave. What if something happened while she was gone? But at the same time, she wanted nothing more than to get away, far away, past the stifling stares and misplaced congratulations.

And she did hate feeling helpless, and guilty, as she stared at the bodies of her ~~friends~~ ~~colleagues~~ whatever they were to her now suspended in bacta.

“It’s your choice, of course. And only if you feel ready.”

Perhaps, given that she had survived, Jyn should try and figure out how to live again.

“I’ll go.”

/

Five days later, Jyn stepped into medical with a black eye and a bloody nose to find Cassian Andor propped up reading a HoloPad.

The site stopped her short, some unnamed feeling crashing into her chest.

Cassian was the first person in her life who’d ever come back for her. Who’d looked out for her without question. Who’d dragged himself up with a broken back so he could shoot Krennic before Krennic could shoot her.

Jyn was a lone wolf. She didn’t know how to trust. But Cassian – he had made her question that for the first time in her life.

As if he sensed her presence, his eyes glanced up from the HoloPad. His entire face broke out into a weary but relieved smile.

“Jyn!”

Jyn wasn’t aware that she was moving until she was right in front of him, one hand reaching out towards his own.

She paused. Her eyes flickered to his. Then she gently took his hand in her own.

Cassian let out a gentle sigh.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up.” Jyn tried to tamp down the guilt inside her. She had been helping, finding bacta, but she’d left Cassian to wake up _alone…_

“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have woken up.” Cassian replied simply. “Baze was here. And Mon Mothma, later – she told me where you were.”

“Baze is awake too?”

“And Chirrut. The medical droid offered to replace his eyes, but he said no. Said he doesn’t need eyes to see, and they’d distract him from the force.”

“Bodhi?”

“He lost his legs. They’re waiting to fit prosthetics first.”

A wince suddenly rippled across Cassian’s face. Jyn tensed.

“Do you need-“

Before she could finish her question, a medical droid wheeled into the room and started beeping indignantly.

“I think Cassian-“

“Your nose is broken.” The droid interrupted. “Sit down. I will apply bacta.”

Jyn considered arguing. Then she remembered the last time she had tried to defy a medical droid.

Letting go of Cassian’s hand, she had down on a chair beside his bed. Her hand felt strangely cold now.

“Mr Andor will need more surgery on his spine. Following that and another two days in bacta he has a 34.65% chance of making a full recovery.”

“34.65%?” Jyn flinched away from the droid.

“Jyn. It’s fine.” Cassian sounded resigned.

“His chance of walking again is now at a high of 85.09%. He is recovering well. There is no cause for immediate alarm.”

“It’s not fine.” Jyn felt like her throat was closing up. She practically had the force the words out.

“I am alive. And I have you.”

The medi-droid picked that moment to reset Jyn’s nose, and pain wracked through her. But even if it hadn’t, she didn’t know how she would have responded.

/

In the elevator, they had both been sure they were going to die.

They had no way to get off Sharif. Jyn’s knee was barely holding up, and Cassian couldn’t stand unaided at all. But they had sent the plans to the rebel alliance. They had succeeded. That was enough.

Cassian’s eyes had met hers, and there had been a glimpse of what might have been.

Jyn didn’t know how to not be alone – but if anyone could have changed that, it would have been Cassian. Somehow, she had come to trust him. Even feel something more for him. But they were about to die. The time wasn’t right. The time would never be right.

She hadn’t kissed him. She had wanted to. She was fairly certain he had wanted to as well.

Then they had survived.

/

“I want you to promise me something.”

Jyn glanced up from her HoloPad. She had thought Cassian was asleep. He needed to rest before his operation.

“I want you to promise me you’ll live your life.”

The silence crackled with things unsaid.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I may never walk again. I don’t know what kind of life I can lead. But you-“

“I’m not leaving you.” Jyn’s voice cracked on the last word. She meant it. But – but she was still a lone wolf, and she still didn’t know how to trust, not really, even though she tried. For him.

“I don’t want you to stay for me.”

Pain lashed through Jyn’s chest.

“If you stay, Jyn, you have to stay for you.”

/

After the decimation of blue squadron on Scarif, the alliance had created a new squadron. They named it rogue. When she heard, Jyn spent three hours wandering on her own in the forest, turning away whenever she heard a sign of life.

It was a fitting tribute, but it was still too painful.

Jyn wasn’t a pilot, but they offered her a place anyway. She only narrowly avoided hitting the man who suggested it. But after her trip to find bacta, she found herself tagging along on another simple mission – this time to find droid parts for R2 units.

Baze and Chirrut were staying until Bodhi woke up – and until Cassian woke up again. But they weren’t staying forever. “We’re guardians,” Chirrut had said simply, and Jyn understood. They had a life and a purpose. They still knew what they were living for.

She had considered waiting with them, but Cassian’s words kept going through her head. She needed a distraction. Jyn had never been good at just sitting around.

“If you stay, Jyn, you have to stay for you.”

Jyn was a selfish individual. It had kept her alive. Everything she did was for her. Even trying to save her father had its origins in selfishness – she had known it would hurt too much if she lost him again. (It did). She always made decisions for herself.

“If you stay, Jyn, you have to stay for you.”

When it came down to it, Jyn didn’t think she _could_ stay only for Cassian. It went against too much of who she was. But if she acted only for herself – what would she do?

Jyn didn’t know what she was living for anymore. She didn’t know what she wanted. She was entirely without purpose, without direction.

If she stayed for him, it gave her a purpose. In a way, that was staying for her.

“If you stay, Jyn, you have to stay for you.”

What right did he have to ask for more?

/

R2 parts, it turned out, weren’t difficult to find. But it still took long enough that Bodhi was awake when she returned.

For a given sense of the word.

“He has experienced a great deal of trauma. It will take some time for him to come to terms with it. His mind needs rest and time.” The medical droid rattled off a load of diagnostic terms that barely made it past the buzzing in Jyn’s ears.

Another scream echoed through the medical bay, and Jyn flinched.

Her mind was far from whole. But Bodhi’s…

It wasn’t just his legs that he had lost.

“The force is with him.” Chirrut still sounded serene and calm. “His mind will return, as the force wills it.”

Baze placed one hand on Chirrut’s shoulder. Jyn glanced away.

“You heard that Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star?” Chirrut’s tone of voice hadn’t changed.

“Only after it destroyed Alderaan.”

Her father’s work had not been for naught. The death star had been destroyed. But if only Jyn had got to the plans quicker, insisted on going to Scarif before Eadu…

“There is no point in thinking about what might have been. If the timeline had been any different, Skywalker may never have joined the alliance. The Jedi might have been gone forever.”

“Have you met him?” Jyn glanced back at Chirrut.

Baze grunted. Chirrut smiled.

“The force is strong with him. He has invited me to train with him, but I am no Jedi.”

“You could be.”

“That time is past. The force had other plans for me. He will make a good Jedi.”

Sometimes, Jyn wondered if the force had a sadistic streak.

/

“He will walk again.”

Jyn almost collapsed in relief. Had she been capable of it, she might even had smiled at the medical droid.

“He can come out of the bacta in a few hours, when the cuts on his back are fully healed. He may not regain full function and sensation in his limbs, but he’ll have enough to walk at least with an aid. He will need to be patient with the rest of his recovery.”

“Thank you.”

“It is my job.”

Later, Jyn would muse that if she was a robot, people might stop congratulating her for Scarif. That had, after all, been her job – her family’s mess to clean up. But in that moment, all she could feel was relief. Cassian would be OK.

Some fractured part of her got a step closer to being whole.

/

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”

Jyn glanced down at Cassian’s hand in hers.

“Feeling philosophical?”

“I am not a sociable man, by nature. I joined the rebel alliance when I was six years old, and I stayed because I knew there was more power in the alliance than I could ever achieve on my own.  Unity is an amazing thing.”

“I don’t know how to be part of a team.”

“You do. You’re just afraid to. But after everything, is there any sense in being afraid anymore?”

“Fear keeps me alive.”

“No. Hope keeps us alive.”

/

“I love you.”

“I don’t know how to love.”

Cassian smiled. “I don’t expect you to love me back. I don’t expect you to do anything except what you want to do. I just thought you should know. I didn’t know how to love people before, either – I could love K2 because I reprogrammed him myself. I could trust him. I couldn’t trust people enough for that. But I love you.”

Jyn had that funny feeling in her chest again.

“That’s why I don’t want you to stay for me, Jyn. I love you. And I know you won’t be happy, sitting around here and waiting for me.”

“If I could trust anyone, it would be you.”

Cassian smiled again.

“I know.”


End file.
